Below The Beltway

This is what happens when a political campaign hires bad staffers.

The Barack Obama campaign is dealing today with the fallout from a story about two Muslim women wearing a traditional head scarf being removed from a position where she could be seen at a campaign rally:

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

The campaign has apologized to the women, both Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally.

“This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama’s commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers.”

The women, understandably, were offended and upset:

“I was coming to support him, and I felt like I was discriminated against by the very person who was supposed to be bringing this change, who I could really relate to,” said Hebba Aref, a 25-year-old lawyer who lives in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. “The message that I thought was delivered to us was that they do not want him associated with Muslims or Muslim supporters.”

And the we-support-McCain-even-though-we-know-he’s-neither-a-Republican-nor-a-conservative blogosphere has jumped on the story, with several bloggers making a point of the fact that the Obama campaign’s “Fight The Smears” website treats the accusation that Barack Obama is a Muslim as a “smear.”

Allahpundit notes:

It is odd that the campaign itself is willing to call the Muslim rumors a “smear” on its anti-smear site. Doubtless that too in short order will be blamed on (a) conservative bloggers, (b) Fox News, (c) conservative bloggers by people on Fox News. Ah well. Speaking of Muslim rumors, though, go read Jake Tapper’s analysis of the interview on Israeli Radio with Obama’s half-brother Malik. The Jerusalem Post published a short item last week claiming that Malik said Obama had a “Muslim background.” Tain’t so.

And Jon Henke, who I ordinarily agree with, says this:

It is one thing for the Obama campaign to criticize the “Obama is a Muslim” rumors – he is not a Muslim, and there is no excuse for making that claim – but what does it mean when Obama says these claims that he is Muslim as not just false, but a smear

Well, to be frank about it, I think that the Obama campaign is treating the “Obama is a Muslim” lie — let’s stop calling it a rumor, okay ? — as a smear because the people who are spreading it intend it as a smear.

Here, for example, is the text of one of the many malicious emails that have been circulated containing this lie:

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (black muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (white atheist ).

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro — a Muslim — moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language. Obama spent “two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school” in Jakarta. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.

Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia. He met Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham-a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas-at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama, Sr. and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr. was two.

Obama’s spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama’s introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best.

In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son’s education.

Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta’s Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world.

Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.

Handsome . . . Charming . . . Winsome . . . Dangerous . . . Deceptive . . . Determined

It’s a lie, and everyone with a brain knows that it’s a lie.

But still, we can find examples of stupid or at least ignorant voters who believe that it’s true and who voted or will vote against Barack Obama solely because they think he’s a “secret Muslim.”

It’s a vile smear for two reasons.

The first, of course, is because it’s untrue.

The second reason, though, is more subtle.

In the end, there’s no difference between suggesting Barack Obama is a Muslim and calling into question the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney, or the Catholic faith of John F. Kennedy, Jr. and, before, him, Al Smith, who likely lost the 1928 Presidential Election because of his Catholic faith. Of course, Romney is a Mormon and Kennedy and Smith were Catholic, but the sentiment is exactly the same — those who continue to spread the Obama is a Muslim lie do so on the assumption, if not the hope, that people will excerise religious prejudice toward Obama because they think he’s a Muslim.

It’s religious intolerance, pure and simple. It’s the same form of idiocy demonstrated by a Republican Congressman from Virginia who went insane exploited like a bigoted demagogue over the fact that America’s first Muslim Congressman wanted to take his oath of office on the Koran.

And, it’s a far cry from the wise words of Sage of Monticello:

[I]t does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

By spreading the Obama-is-a-Muslim lie, there are people who say that a person’s religion should disqualify them per se from public office.

Quite honestly, I can’t think of anything more un-American.